The CAR WIZARD names Cadillac's Northstar Engine the Dumbest Design

welcome back to the wizard shop for those of you who are just now tuning in and never been to this channel before hit the subscribe button we're getting really close to a hundred thousand subscribers I'm really excited about that and if you know a few friends would be interested in this content let them know too many ways on a previous video we talked about the 5.43 valve Ford and some of the issues and how it was the worst engine ever and going on and on about that today we're going to talk about the stupidest design ever as far as an engine goes not necessarily the worst engine but the design is really stupid this is a 2002 Cadillac DeVille with the 4.6 Northstar in it this is my one of my kids cars is she named it Jarvis this is Jarvis he's pretty dirty right now it's raining today it's pretty nasty out and so we're gonna talk about the head gasket issues and the head bolt issues probably some of you when you first seen the car you instantly said oh hey head gaskets are blown on that car no they're not they haven't been for years that's because I fixed it properly with head studs from North Star performance typically the worst years on these has run 97 to 99 around in that rain just really was that they were just over and over and over failing and in 2000 they tried to lengthen the head bolts try and take care of the issue and it helped a little bit but it really did still didn't solve the problem so it wasn't until 2005 that they finally got it fixed after that year they really don't have this problem anymore they went to ls6 head bolts and that took care of the problem really really the problem on these is the threads were like really shallow fine threads and the diameter of the bolt was very small a steel bolt into aluminum when you try to put those kind of pressures with just little fine threads you can see some of the pictures here that that actually pulls this complete set of threads out of the block when you go to try to remove it you can see to the threads that just come out with the bolt that's not very good and very conducive for holding a cylinder head down the fix for that is in that in the dealership's they would use times they would drill it out a little bit bigger and put any I'll show you some pictures here have some time certs where they put these little threaded inserts in and then use the stock head bolts or steel threads at that point I know a guy who's a who worked in the years of these had the dealerships and he did a lot of these and he said that the GM fixed the threaded time certs would probably get you by for three to five years and then it would blow the head gasket again he said it was pretty much guaranteed when they would come in to have this job done you're looking at four or five grand every time that was the dealership charge if I was to do this today you have to pull the whole motor and everything out it really just makes it easier just to pull the whole power unit out and put it on some stands and work on it you have to pull the heads off and if I were to do this job again it would probably be four or five grand and therein lies the problem with these cars these are sell on Craigslist all day long for two or three grand for a nice one and you go to a customer and say okay I can fix this problem it's gonna be four or five grand and they're gonna be like I didn't even spend that much on the car there's no way I'm putting that into the car I'll never recoup my my losses so that's a guaranteed no fix every time it gets declined declined the repairs are declined and that's why these cars are so cheap on Craigslist because people are like oh no I'm not I'm not buying one of those I know the trouble with one of those let's open the hood on this and take a look around and I also have the kit that I had originally used I'll show you that how that works and and just give you a glance around underneath the hood so here we have the hood open and just like I made the comment here a little bit ago it's not really the worst engine ever it just really has a stupid design in those years when they were blowing head gaskets left and right it's kind of an engineering flaw to think why would you put that kind of a fastener and you know and have these kind of issues but the proof proof in the pudding is that once you do head studs on these this car has been running for four years zero problems with the engine none the coolants even at the same level that it was four years ago it just it just runs great there's no issues with the engine but as I stated a little bit ago when you'd go to fix this problem the end has to come out the bottom and the reason why and I've heard of people that are able to do it the engine in place like this but it's just there's no way I'm gonna drill holes in my block bigger while it's sitting in it in here I can't get a good straight angle on it or as you can see even if you get the cams off and the cam covers I mean you can't once you get head studs on here you can't get the head on that the hit especially back here on this one I mean I've heard of guys rolling the motor forward and working on it maybe with time certs I could see that but with head studs I don't I don't see how but let me show you the actual tools that I use to do this job this is the company I used Northstar performance there's Jake Wiebe is the founder I I got this kit from him they had just really gotten going at that point and it's an excellent kit like I said it's been going for four years no trouble you have to take the heads off and get to the the engine block surface and as you can see here this is the size of the original head bolts and this is what it turns out to be when you drill them out it's almost double maybe even triple the diameter and course threads that's the key thing here coarse threads in aluminum deep coarse threads these little ones just pull pull the threads out but basically you have to take this little drilling drill brace so you take these original size bolt holes and you tighten it in you've got it located then you have a smooth hole here and this used a special drill bit that's got a stop on it so you don't go too deep and you drill the old threads out you do is you take this flip it over put these back in and then this will guide your tap straightly into the hole all the way down and back out again then you go and flip it around and do the other holes and it's kind of a long tedious process this type of job you probably better be a car wizard if you're going to do it because if you're if you don't have a whole lot of experience especially I've did I've done a machining work I used to be a machinist years ago if you don't have a lot experience with a drill or hole tolerances or things like that if you don't get this right and you drill the holes crooked or you blow out the holes or you tear up the threads you just ruins your block you just ruined your engine it's not for the faint of heart this is a serious job for a serious person who's either into this or as a professional mechanic so this was the first one I've ever done and it's probably the last one I'll ever do not because I don't want to do the job it's really not hard it's just time consuming but like I said here just a little bit ago the cost is the issue who in the world is gonna pay for that when the car is only worth $2,000 so that's what I run up against so people say have you done a lot of those since no I'd like to but I don't blame the customer for not wanting to do it unless they're sentimental value or something special to the vehicle there really is no reason to fix it it's just not it's almost not worth it so that kind of gives you an idea of what was the common issue with these engines and I'm not I'm not really gonna make the claim that's the worst engine ever because as we see here once the issue is fixed it's been trouble-free absolutely no issues so these are the really nice cars it's right it's really nice and obviously it's it's not a Rolls Royce but they're still fairly fairly good car they ride good they actually gets good fuel economy so for me it was worth fixing it I got the car for really cheap and fixed it and now my daughter's driving it I didn't have to go buy a car and I can trust that she can drive it and she has been driving it for a long time without blowing head gaskets it's not going to happen because as you've seen how big those threads were when you fix it it would have to break the bolts or get damaged the head before I pulled that out so anyways thanks for tagging along with me today I thought you guys would like to learn a little bit about the worst design ever it's not the worst engine ever but I think it's a pretty pretty bad design flaw there if you if you see below we have t-shirts for sale there's there's coffee mugs there's hoodies and there's also now stickers decals that you can put on your car or your toolbox at work or wherever it is that you on your cubicle any tools and previous videos you've seen that I use check my amazon affiliate page all those are listed there for sale and maybe help you get some work done on your car so anyways thanks for watching and we'll try to stay dry today in this crummy weather [Music] you

Channel: Car Wizard

Views: 594,742

Rating: 4.9001589 out of 5

Keywords: car wizard, david long, hoovies garage, tyler hoover, car issues with tyler hoover, chrisfix, omega auto clinic, scotty kilmer, car repair, car maintenance, tavarish, Doug DeMuro, vehicle virgins, watchjrgo, jalopnik, smoking tire, samcrac, vinwiki, Hoovie, northstar, cadillac, headbolts, head studs, worst engine, worst design, dumbest design, bad engine

Id: -nf0bp4dmZU

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Datum000]

North Star: the LS swap for masochists.

[u/LeifEriksonASDF]

There was a recent episode of The Grand Tour where Richard Hammond got an old Cadillac for a challenge and he was extolling the virtues of the Northstar to heaven, which was one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on that show.

[u/superhighcompression]

I heard that if a northstar isn’t leaking fluids it’s because it doesn’t have any

[u/kidsandheroes]

Owned a Cadillac with a north star engine...the transmission killed the car

[u/FuckCazadors]

Doesn’t the Car Wizard know about the flat four as fitted to the Lancia Gamma?

That engine drove the power steering pump off the timing belt to the left camshaft. If you turned the steering wheel all the way to lock stop for more than a few seconds you’d put so much pressure on the pump as to snap the timing belt and thus lunch the left bank of cylinders. Fucking genius.

[u/AoyagiAichou]

The car wizard has never seen the last version of it, eh? The one in the STS.

[u/WorkingSubstance]

This really should be renamed "dumbest headbolt thread design ever" especially considering the Northstars don't seem to have any other problems.

Same goes for the Olds Diesels, too few headbolts and no water filter, but okay otherwise.

[u/mgobla]

Too bad the US never got VWs 1.4 twincharger TSI...

[u/smooththg69]

I guess I’m the only person that kind of liked the North Star. I have rebuilt two of them and studded all head bolts. Actually I’m a fan of the starter location under the intake manifold shields it from a lot of nastys all you really needed was a 10mm and 13mm the get it out. The cars they put them in were just so fucking heavy.